Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

It seemed to Gavein that he was a television set, showing all the action but unable to act himself.

“The autopsy,” said Dr. Barth with a grim chuckle, “will be very thorough.”

Gavein saw him through a thickening cloud and couldn’t tell if the man was still moving his nose from ear to ear.

“If he survives the gas, it will be a vivisection, not an autopsy.”

“That should take care of him, senator,” Siskin said. “We’ll leave the organs out, in the air, because he’s an Aeriel . To make sure he doesn’t come back.”

“What about his wife?” asked Wilcox.

“Still alive.”

“Is she Death too?”

“We’re not sure. Probably not, since she has cancer.”

The voices were coming from inside Gavein’s skull. They grew softer. It was harder for him to distinguish among the speakers. Only he, in the black jacket, said nothing. It was harder also to form thoughts. The gray mist before his eyes spread like mold. He felt no pain. His field of vision was the diameter of the face of a watch, and all the figures in it were dwindling. Soon it resembled a small metal ball, blinking with different colors as it hung in the darkness of outer space.

The ball began to rotate. To jump in all directions. Gavein felt a sharp, deepening pain. The ball meanwhile had floated away, far away. He lost consciousness.

When he woke, it was to two torments: the ache throughout his body and an awful tedium. He threw up once, twice, three times. There was nothing left to bring up, but his stomach muscles still spasmed. His heart hammered wildly. Then he drifted back into oblivion.

When he came to again, it was cold. He moved. He was partly covered with something, battered, naked. Vomit stank around him, but another smell bored into his nostrils. His eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he saw it wasn’t completely dark. It was surprisingly easy to move his head. He brushed rubble from it, raising a cloud of dust, which made him sneeze several times. He tried changing position, but a thousand edges, corners, and the dust itself all began to claw at his skin.

He freed his left arm first. Slowly, methodically, he removed stone after stone, brick fragment after brick fragment. He was badly bruised but, in all the rubble and dust, had apparently sustained no serious injury. He dug himself out with new energy. It was hardest to extricate his right leg from under the gurney, which was locked in place by the mound of rubble. He wriggled out from under the mound carefully, so it wouldn’t fall on him.

He tried to stand, but the ceiling was too low. Everything had a mysterious cast to it because of the red glow. The acrid smell of sulfur burned his nose. A deafening roar—it came from outside, not from within his head. He felt his body all over: the sore places, the innumerable scrapes and bruises. There was dull pain at the touch, but no more. Moving did not present a problem. He was caked with sweat and brick powder. He was afraid to take a step, not wanting to cut his feet on the broken glass that was everywhere. The floor had risen, in defiance of the horizontal, and somewhere in the darkness it met with the ceiling. The operating room looked as if a giant had knocked it over for a joke and then stepped on it, crushing one of the walls.

Soon it became light enough for Gavein to see the flooring and avoid the glass. It was warmer now, perhaps because of his exertion. He climbed the slope of the floor toward a dark opening, a door visible at the top. Unfortunately, it led only to the dressing room. At least he found some clothes. He beat the dust from them, wiped his face with some rag or towel, and put on a hospital outfit; the uniform of the DS staff. The hospital slippers were rather light, but he could find nothing better. Through them his feet unpleasantly felt the larger fragments. The second door was blocked, so he returned to the operating room.

The roar had increased. He approached the gaping air beyond the collapsed wall. The sun was coming up, and the roar now intensified in waves. He would have to find another exit. The vibration in the floor alarmed him. This damaged building could crumble at any moment.

He noticed a hand jutting from the rubble. It took him a moment or two to uncover some of Nylund’s body. The nurse had had no luck: her head was flattened by a section of wall.

Gavein had been more fortunate. The operating table and the overturned gurney together had shielded him from the falling wall, and then all that slid onto him were stones and bricks.

He groped his way around the room, looking for an exit. The floor began to sway. He needed to leave this precarious ruin immediately.

Through the pulsing roar, which at times was like a series of explosions, he heard a voice. In the rubble he could make out the shoulders and head of Saalstein.

“Are you all right?”

“My left arm, it hurts, hurts badly. I can’t move,” Saalstein answered, cogent.

“Lie still. You may have broken bones,” said Gavein and set to work. He removed pieces of sheetrock. He was afraid the man’s spine might be injured.

“That was a quake and a half,” said Saalstein. “It began the moment Barth gave you the third injection. Everything went head over heels.”

“I thought it was my brain doing somersaults.” Gavein finished his digging. “Try to get up on your own, Saalstein. I don’t want to make you a paraplegic if your back is broken.”

The biologist moved an arm, a leg, then awkwardly began to scrabble out.

“Not so terrible,” he said. “The pain in my left arm goes right through me, but I think my back is all right. Help me up, Throzz.”

Gavein lifted him.

“We better get out of here,” Saalstein said. “A sling would be good. My arm is killing me.”

“I don’t know if I can find anything for you here. Maybe in another room. Let’s try the hall. Careful, there’s a lot of broken glass in that direction.”

The floor shook again.

“We really should hurry.”

Gavein moved aside some rubble. Saalstein stood, trying not to faint. His left arm didn’t seem to be broken, but it was seriously crushed. Some rubble slid away, and Gavein uncovered Siskin, who was cold, sliced by glass. Death had overtaken him as he fled from the room. Pulling the corpse out by its legs made it possible to open one of the swinging doors a little. The rest of the glass fell from the metal frame. The shaking increased in strength. The noise outside was like rolling thunder.

“What’s out there may be worse than an earthquake,” Gavein said.

Saalstein would have shrugged if he hadn’t had an injured collarbone. “We can bitch to our hearts’ content after we make it to a safe place,” he said.

They followed the rising, rubble-filled hallway. Here and there the ceiling and floor had been torn open, and they could see through to the levels above and below. They came upon bodies and stopped to see if any were alive, but none were. The survivors had got out long ago. In a puddle of water that had collected around a broken appliance, Gavein washed his hands and face. When Saalstein urged him to hurry, Gavein muttered that maybe it would be better if David Death didn’t live.

“It’s not that simple,” said Saalstein, kicking a piece of brick and groaning because of his arm.

The staircase was a ruin—the outside wall had fallen away—but they went down the shaking steps, half of which hung over empty space. Plaster sifted from above.

Gavein leaned out and looked at the courtyard. “Look,” he cried. “Look at those boulders!”

The ground was covered with rocks of every size, and more were coming down, an intermittent hail of stone.

“Watch it, or you’ll fall.”